Tuesday 31 May 2016

Back from Vanishing Point (LOL!!)

ARGH!! It's been 2 and a half months that i didn't post anything ?!?? Time does flies!

Well, i'm back but the question remains: for how long...LOL!! OK now where was i ?! Errr...let's starts by replying to comments left in that period of time:
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Quick question here. I'd read that Baer had created an active card, but couldn't find any details on the circuit that he created. I'm an electrical engineer by trade and would like to try modding an Odyssey card for sound. If you could tell me where you found the circuit details, I'd greatly appreciate it. 

Reply: Hi fd3400f8...! 

M.Baer did created an active sound card, well in fact two. One in 1972-73 but this one disappear/lost in the fog of time and he rebuilt one 40 years later (in 2003). But there is no circuit/schematic of this card online.

I got the sound from a recorded video done by G4 so the sound n the OdySim is the real sound you can hear from the 2003 sound card. But technically, you can get a very faint "thund" sound (almost non audible) from pin #30 of the cartridge slot (J2). From this point, you'll need to amplify the sound and tweek it to maks a "beep" or "bip" sound. This is the only information i know on how M.Baer done his active sound card. Oh and BTW, the method was re-used in the Odyssey 100, 200 400 and 500. Check one of them to make yourself a sound circuit. Good Luck! =)


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Funny Ad! Actually, they might have taken the 1970’s aftershave approach and put a thought balloon over the woman’s head that reads “I never thought that Gus was very appealing before, but after 40 minutes of trying to figure out this tedious Football game, he looks downright . . . exciting!”


Reply: Hi CN10!

Thanks! The original ad was from "Griffin Microsheen Stain Boot Polish" which i've found on the net. And your thought idea for the ad is also funny! (lol!!) =)


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James Brolly reported some bugs and errors which were:

* Scoreboard works but scores stays at 0-0 forever
* OSD cool but would be better if can be deactivated and just leave AI and Sound icons on the left.
* Input command lines ??

OK, now the zero scores are now working in the last version i got (on my HD) and now we can deactivate the OSD (or not) with the F5 button. James also sent me a test.zip file which shows that command lines can work with LOVE.EXE.
 
Tried it and yes, it does work! Cool! Thanks for the file James! Oh and i also discovered that if you make a "conf.lua" file, you can switch ON or OFF many options as a "conf" file is a configuration file. See here: https://love2d.org/wiki/Config_Files

But i'm using LOVE version 0.8.0 so there is not much options. I will eventually upgrade it to a newer LOVE version (example 0.10.1) in the future. 

Nico (aka pucpuc) reported a small error in the readme file as it states AI is F1 but in fact AI is F4. And he also made avalaible a overlays.zip files in which many overlays are in higher sizes.Many thanks! I'll check them out and eventually use them in future releases of the OdySim. =)

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That's it for now as i have a lot of catching up. In the next post, i'll talk about an Odyssey that almost saw a release but was axed at the last minute. 
 
The only hint for now i'm giving is the model: YD7001 

Stay "tuned" to read about it very soon! =)